I Do! I Really Do!

Maybe it’s the advice on being moral that I got from Marion Barry, but I don’t feel at all like joining the feeding frenzy around Miss California USA Carrie Prejean. There are many loud voices on many different sides, but some of the loudest belong to Perez Hilton, Michael Musto, FOX News, and Maggie Gallagher. Strange bedfellows share the skanky waterbed of incivility, don’t you think?

Like any community of people with one or more traits in common, the LGBTQ community is a broad and diverse one. In fact, it’s a lot like the “heterosexual community”: A big bunch of unrelated people, all with different views. When Fox News and others defend Prejean, they always point to people like Hilton and Musto and say, “The ‘gays’ say…” But that’s like saying Marion Barry speaks for all African Americans or Charlize Theron for all South Africans or Alice for all housekeepers.

I don’t agree with either Miss Hilton or Mr. Musto, and I don’t think calling Prejean a “stupid bitch” or sending her hate mail or comparing her in any way to Klaus Barbie is how I would choose to show my disagreement with her statements, nor do I think that Fox News ought use her case to imply–or outright state–that anyone who is angry about them is a deputy in the Thought Police. When you oppress people and make them into unwilling second-class citizens, they tend to get angry.

Remember, they INVENTED the Thought Police. We just participate occasionally, as a lot of human beings do. Perez Hilton and she should be natural allies, after all, if you lend any credence to all the wretched stereotypes they show on TV. That’s why Hilton was THERE in the FIRST PLACE, where no one should be–at a bloody beauty pageant. I’d rather be trapped in an elevator with Ann B. Davis and nothing to drink but Snapple.

So a Miss USA contestant believes marriage is between a man and a woman. So what? Who cares? Why do we have these stupid pageants anyway? They’re sexist and ridiculous, and surely there must be a better way to be an ambassador to the world, spread the love, encourage little girls that they can be anything, wear sequined or brocaded gowns, appear at malls, and raise money for diseases and stuff.

What I’m outraged about is the fact that what happened between PEREZ HILTON and a BEAUTY PAGEANT CONTESTANT is national news. Doesn’t that bother anyone?

Do I support Prejean’s right to say what she said?

I do. I really do.

Do I wonder what her support for her belief is aside from “that’s how I was raised?”

I do. Don’t we often question whether how we were raised is still right for us, now that we are at the big girl table? Now that we have access to REAL breast implants instead of just toilet paper?

Do I pray (yes, we pray too) that she doesn’t think that her “belief,” unsupported, should be the basis for any law, in any land or on any planet in any universe? She said, “In my country…” don’t we have the same country? The one in which people have a certain set of constitutional rights whether you agree with them or not? I only wish she’d respect mine as much as I respect hers.

I do.

Do I kind of hope she didn’t vote?

I kind of do.

Other than that, I don’t care.

Members of minority groups really can’t win, you see. If someone says something that’s offensive, we/they only have three real choices: 1) Ignore it and risk being seen as weak, emotionally dead, impotent, politically and intellectually apathetic; risk endless repeats of the episode from those who think we won’t stand up for ourselves, or don’t care, or don’t dare; 2) Respond firmly but civilly and pray (yes, we pray too) that “the other side” will respond civilly as well and not turn verbal–or literal–firehoses on us; 3) Respond uncivilly, lashing out perhaps because we are angry and disappointed and risk being called “character assassins,” thought police, humorless, etc.

Oh, and then there’s seeing the REAL problem–that beauty pageants seem actually to be watched and that some people seem actually to care about what Carrie Prejean, Perez Hilton, Fox News, and Maggie Gallagher think.